How Step 7 Led Development of an Enterprise Portal that Unified Engagement Across Real Estate Agents, Mortgage Officers, and Executive Leadership
A top-10 real estate company and its mortgage subsidiary needed a better way for real estate agents and mortgage officers to collaborate throughout the mortgage closing lifecycle. Step 7 Consulting was engaged to architect and build a secure, data-driven agent / mortgage officer portal that unified workflows, synchronized data across systems, and enabled downstream CRM and reporting integrations.
Outcome: A production-grade collaboration platform that eliminated data silos, delivered near-real-time mortgage visibility, and enabled agents, mortgage officers, recruiters, and leadership teams to operate from a single, authoritative source of truth.
Client Background
The client is a large real estate organization with an independent mortgage subsidiary supporting tens of thousands of agents and loan officers across markets nationwide.
While both groups were essential to closing transactions, they operated across disconnected systems with limited shared visibility into mortgage activity, deal status, referral performance, and agent engagement.
A critical requirement for the platform was reliable, scalable access to mortgage system data. Step 7 designed the architecture around Encompass Data Connect from ICE Mortgage Technology, which served as the primary data supply for loan-level and operational mortgage data.
Step 7 was engaged to lead the platform from concept through production as the client’s engineering and delivery partner. Step 7 Consulting led all aspects of software engineering, including system architecture, data modeling, workflow design, API development, platform integrations, and production deployment. Throughout the engagement, Step 7 worked closely with the Executive Vice President who had project responsibility and served as the primary stakeholder, ensuring alignment between technical execution and enterprise priorities.
Challenges
Before the platform was built, the organization faced several structural and operational challenges:
- Agents and mortgage officers worked in separate systems with no shared collaboration layer
- Mortgage data lived inside Encompass and was inaccessible to agents and recruiting teams
- Lead and CRM systems lacked consistent mortgage context
- Manual coordination and status updates slowed deal velocity
- Recruiting teams lacked tools to systematically engage underperforming agents
- Leadership had limited visibility into referral performance and engagement trends
- Data synchronization across systems needed to scale reliably without impacting core mortgage infrastructure
The challenge was not simply building a portal, but designing a data-first integration platform capable of supporting operational workflows, analytics, recruiting, and CRM consumption at enterprise scale.
Solution
Step 7 Consulting designed and delivered a secure, cloud-native collaboration platform backed by a robust data ingestion, processing, and integration architecture. Step 7 maintained a collaborative working relationship with the Executive Vice President throughout the initiative, conducting regular status reviews and ensuring the platform would meet both immediate operational needs and long-term enterprise requirements.
Engineering Leadership & Delivery
Step 7 Consulting served as the technical leadership and delivery organization for the entire platform.
Beyond architecture and implementation, Step 7 led and managed the full, cross-functional development team, spanning:
- Solution and systems architecture
- Project and delivery management
- Frontend and backend engineering
- Data engineering and ETL development
- Infrastructure and cloud engineering
- Quality assurance and release management
The development team was composed of a mix of Step 7 engineers and additional specialists recruited and onboarded by Step 7 to meet the needs of the platform. Regardless of sourcing, all technical resources operated under Step 7’s leadership, processes, and delivery standards.
Throughout the engagement, Step 7:
- Partnered with the Executive Vice President to define success criteria, prioritize feature delivery, and navigate enterprise constraints
- Defined the end-to-end system and data architecture
- Authored detailed technical specifications, workflows, and acceptance criteria
- Planned and coordinated work across frontend, backend, data, and infrastructure teams
- Led sprint execution, QA, and production deployments
- Provided the Executive Vice President with transparent project visibility through regular progress reports, risk assessments, and milestone tracking
- Owned delivery accountability from concept through production release
- Delivered documentation to support long-term platform evolution
This model ensured architectural consistency, predictable delivery, and a single point of technical ownership across a complex, multi-system platform. The collaboration with the Executive Vice President enabled Step 7 to navigate enterprise processes efficiently while maintaining delivery momentum and ensuring stakeholder alignment across the organization.
Portal Architecture & Agent / Mortgage Officer Workflows
Step 7 architected and built a modern web portal that served as the primary collaboration surface for agents and mortgage officers.
Key capabilities included:
- Secure role-based authentication and access control
- End-to-end deal and loan status visibility
- Mortgage invites and buyer engagement workflows
- Push notifications for status changes and required actions
- Mortgage officer profiles and market-specific collateral
The portal was designed with a clean separation between UI, APIs, and backend services to support scalability, maintainability, and long-term evolution.
Mortgage Data Integration & ETL Architecture
Mortgage data ingestion was built around Encompass Data Connect, which served as the system of record for loan-level and operational mortgage data.
Step 7 designed and implemented:
- ETL pipelines processing thousands of mortgage records every 10 minutes
- Data normalization and transformation into domain-specific models
- Idempotent ingestion logic to safely handle retries and partial failures
- Persisted state to support reconciliation, troubleshooting, and auditing
This architecture enabled mortgage data to flow reliably into operational workflows, recruiting systems, CRM consumers, and downstream analytics.
Transactional System & Data Warehouse Design
To support both operational performance and analytics, Step 7 intentionally separated transactional workloads from analytical workloads:
- Transactional databases supported real-time portal and workflow operations
- Downstream processing pipelines populated a centralized data warehouse optimized for reporting and analytics
This design ensured high performance, scalability, and clear data contracts across systems.
Data Warehouse, Analytics & Reporting
The centralized data warehouse enabled:
- Referral and performance metrics at the agent, loan officer, team, and regional levels
- Operational dashboards for day-to-day visibility
- Executive-level reporting for leadership decision-making
This eliminated manual reporting processes and created a single source of analytical truth across the organization.
API Platform & External Data Access
Step 7 built a secure API platform to expose transactional and analytical data to downstream systems.
Key characteristics included:
- RESTful APIs with consistent schemas
- Authentication and access controls aligned with enterprise requirements
- Clear separation between internal services and external consumers
This ensured the platform could support CRM systems and future integrations without duplicating data pipelines.
Salesforce Integration
To support the client’s migration from Velocify lead management to Salesforce for long-term CRM capabilities, Step 7:
- Designed and exposed secure APIs surfacing mortgage and transactional data
- Enabled Salesforce to ingest data originating in Encompass and processed through the platform’s ETL pipelines
- Ensured Salesforce teams could consume the same normalized, operational mortgage data used by the portal backend
As a result, Salesforce operated on the same authoritative transactional data that powered agent, mortgage officer, recruiting, and reporting workflows—without duplicating ingestion logic or rebuilding integrations.
Admin Tools & Reporting
Step 7 built a comprehensive Admin application that functioned as a full operational control plane for the platform.
Capabilities included:
- Administrative user and role management
- Configuration of portal features, permissions, and workflows
- Reporting dashboards providing visibility into agent activity, referrals, and engagement metrics
Recruiting & Engagement
Step 7 designed and implemented a dedicated recruiting and engagement application as a first-class component of the platform, purpose-built for the mortgage company’s recruiting organization.
Rather than simple outreach tools, this recruiting system functioned as a workflow-driven application tightly integrated with the broader platform, enabling nearly a dozen recruiters to engage agents at scale.
The recruiting application supported a structured funnel, including:
- Identifying agents with low or no referral activity
- Managing and tracking recruiter outreach efforts
- Capturing engagement signals and measuring interest
- Assigning engaged agents to dedicated mortgage officers
Additional capabilities included recruiter performance reporting, a custom email and text-messaging system with engagement tracking, and push notifications delivered directly to agents.
Technologies
The platform was built using a modern, scalable stack designed for reliability, observability, and long-term maintainability:
- Frontend: React, Next.js
- Backend: Node.js
- Database: Microsoft SQL Server
- Infrastructure: AWS EC2 (Ubuntu)
- Deployment & CI/CD: GitHub Actions powering CI/CD pipelines
- Environments: Development, QA, Staging, and Production
Results
- Delivered a trusted technical partnership that enabled the Executive Vice President to confidently report progress and platform value to enterprise stakeholders
- Unified agents, mortgage officers, recruiters, and leadership around a single platform
- Delivered near-real-time mortgage visibility via Encompass Data Connect
- Reduced manual coordination and duplicate data handling
- Enabled CRM workflows powered by shared transactional data
- Improved recruiting effectiveness and referral engagement
- Established a scalable foundation for future platform expansion
- Created clear documentation and knowledge transfer to support the client’s long-term platform ownership
Before & After Snapshot
Before
- Disconnected mortgage, lead, recruiting, and CRM systems
- Manual coordination and status updates
- Limited visibility into referrals and agent engagement
- Fragmented reporting and analytics
After
- Unified collaboration and engagement platform
- Near-real-time mortgage data synchronization
- CRM systems consuming shared operational data
- Centralized reporting and analytics
- Enterprise-ready platform with clear operational ownership
Why This Matters for Mid-Market Teams
This case study shows how Step 7 Consulting helps organizations:
- Operate as the engineering and delivery partner, not just an implementer
- Partner effectively with enterprise stakeholders to navigate organizational complexity
- Architect data-first platforms, not point solutions
- Operationalize data from core systems like Encompass
- Build extensible platforms that evolve with the business
- Deliver with accountability in enterprise environments
The result is not just better software—it’s systems that scale with both users and data and partnerships that deliver predictable outcomes.
Project Artifacts
Home Page
Mortgage Deal Status
Agent Ranking Board
Agent Production Chart
Loan Officer Selection
